Eggs On Top
Eggs On Top is the first solo album by English musician Mr Creosote. It was released on the 7th May 2003 and competed with Railway Kings Ruinous Ways for peak chart position in the UK on its day of release. It was the first album entirely written and produced by Mr Creosote without longtime songwriting partners George Hudson and Howard Taft, after the breakup of Creosote 5 years prior. The goal of the album was essentially to create comeback record for Mr Creosote, with a heavy lean towards the catchy pop choruses which made his earlier works with Creosote so popular. Most marketing focused on selling it as a "return to form" with a refreshed sound nonetheless. The record's sound was far less heavy than on Smoldering Jambalaya, featuring acoustic guitars and soft rock balladry. A few tracks experiment with alternative styles in what Mr Creosote admitted himself was an attempt to further broaden its commercial appeal. Eggs on Top is one of the most expensive albums ever made, costing an estimated £3 million, largely due to re-recordings and the employment of various classical ensembles. The album's dismal commercial performance at the time saw Creosote lose his contract with EMI by the end of the year, and met with overwhelming negative responses from critics and fans. Background The album was recorded amid a fierce and worsening feud with Jeremiah's former bandmates, Hudson and Taft, who had formed The Railway Kings in 1998 and released a successful debut album that same year. Re-naming himself "Mr Creosote", Jeremiah diverted much time, energy and money into recording rival material, despite suffering from writer's block and serious creative confusion in the wake up of the Creosote breakup. A 1999 EP, "5 minutes with Mr Creosote", was an attempt to "plug the gap" and "keep the ball trundling", but was widely criticised for lacklustre songwriting, production and poor attempts at genre crossing. Other 1999 musical efforts by Mr Creosote were likewise criticised, including his poor performance during Woodstock 99, and a general "leeching" off his old hits, which had largely been penned by George Hudson. He spent much of the year using his media influence to create hit-pieces on The Railway Kings and poorly disguised puff pieces in his own favour. As he lost his personal newspaper connections forged over the last decade, he increasingly sought to increase his personal wealth by new business ventures in a hope to further gain influence by sheer finance, culminating in the creation of Creosote Inc. in 2000. He also launched a magazine, "All Music UK", though the bland title failed to hide its purpose for spreading constant propaganda and scandal about The Railway Kings and raising Mr Creosote's profile. In 2001, with these other lines of progress exhausted, Creosote realised he would have to launch an album of his own to properly rival The Railway Kings. At first he attempted to begin this in complete secrecy, not wanting "the buggers to find out and beat me to it", he conducted all affairs around the album shrouded in contracts with threatening secrecy clauses for record personnel, session musicians, sound engineers, and even locals in a village 2 miles from his estate, whom he feared could overhear the new recordings from his studio. Upon being informed it was not legally sound to force signatures from baffled Scottish farmers, and seeing much needed session musicians repelled by threats of £2 million fines just for letting "details slip", he dropped such practises and announced the recording of the album in July 2001. Recording & Production The recording was immensely long (April 2001 - February 2003), and interrupted by holiday breaks, re-writing and re-recording and general argument and confrontation between an increasingly unstable Jeremiah and anyone he employed on the project. Like Smouldering Jambalaya, the album was recorded entirely at Creosote Manor and its modern studio complex. The location was blamed by many who worked on the album for the general creative stagnation and inability for Jeremiah to keep to recording schedules, as he was incapable of separating leisure from work, and wasted many evenings drinking and showing off the studio work to his guests, largely fellow lords and aristocrats who pretended to be interested while taking advantage of the free drinks. As session guitarist Martin Greeves later described, "The very air of the studio itself filled with damp from the sodden carpet, the sour smell of off food and body odour from Creosote's late night hours of expending tremendous efforts on vocal takes without breaks. He refused to turn on the ventilation as he needed 'the surrounding reminder of work', and often slumped sweating over his bass as he did in the 1998/9 sessions in the the cloying atmosphere, just waiting for an excuse to finish up and head for manor bar proclaiming another good days work. Some of the more stuffy classical and jazz ensembles refused to record in such squalid conditions, often peering with concern at the half eaten rotting food stuffed and crammed in behind mixing equipment, with one violinist peeling a soggy hamburger from his music stand after it had been left there the previous night.". Even amid the general air of stagnation and laziness, the old Creosote habit for occasional sprees of productivity did come, with most of the album completed in such phases, the first from October - December 2001, then May - August 2002, and finally December 2002 - January 2003. These times often saw Creosote actually pay for cleaning and refurbishments of the studio, recognise a need for "a change in ways" and even stick to his schedule with surprising rigidity. Music Songs were mostly comprised of material written by Jeremiah sporadically from 1998 - 2002, including an improved version of "Mary Belle Rouge" which had featured on his 1999 EP. The revamped version featured strings, less of a guitar driven mix, and improved vocal takes. One critic described the raise in standard as "like eliminating some of the effects of tuberculosis", and it was otherwise mocked for the laziness of re-releasing a track which had performed poorly the first time around. The song set a good precedent for the attempted pop anthems on Eggs on Top, with quiet verses before erupting into heavily layered roaring positive choruses, written chiefly for crowd sing-alongs. The music was far more commercial and radio-friendly than any of the Creosote albums, which were always firmly rooted the band's punk roots, with Hudson's driving rhythm guitar and melodic leads maintaining much rock credibility even on the most poppy songs on There's Still More. However, Eggs on Top's songs largely lacked the "bite and punch" which had leapt from the corners of the Creosote sound. Jeremiah had intended to strike into the arena of early 2000s pop, including working with the producers of The Back Street Boys and Take That, however without the dance-oriented songs of such groups, the production simply didn't have its intended effect and left the songs sounding hollow and tonally confused. A number of tracks on the record did deviate from the ballad formula. The hip-hop track "Buggers" was the first outright genre change taken on by Creosote, using an aggressive rap beat, and seeing Creosote spit verses which attacked The Railway Kings. A later hip hop/rock amalgamation took place on the track "Pancake Stomach Ache", which featured a steady drum machine with bass, spoken word verses and a guitar lead on the chorus, the lyrics seem to be another diss towards his former band mates. Some tracks referenced the experimental days of Stained Tablecloth, chiefly 'Cranberry Truths' and 'Closing the Oven Doors', with the former being entirely isntrumental and the other an 8 minute jam. Reception Critical Eggs on Top has been referred to as "The Worst Pop Album of the 21st Century", by Forbes, and even "The biggest letdown in music of all time", by Time. The early joke title by one critic, "Eggs on Flop", quickly caught on and even became redundant within a month of the album's release. The songwriting was widely lambasted as "immature" and "lacking in understanding of musical fundamentals", for forcing the structures and melodies to conform to a perceived model of success. The famous critic Herbert Dinkleferger announced he was "done with the man", and attacked the album in an NME special crossing 2 pages. His primary criticism was the formulaic nature of the songs, and he lamented the lack of Hudson's songwriting; "I increasingly feel that magic was reliant on the man George Hudson, who now deploys it with such success on The Railway Kings' latest effort.". The mix was criticised for being flat, overly compressed and "bogged down" in too much percussion, samples, and unnecessary instruments. Creosote's vocals were largely indistinguishable from his previous efforts, being passable enough on a technical level, they were also lambasted as uninspired and less energetic than on older LPs. The track "Buggers", was simultaneously the most praised as well as most criticised, as it at least featured much energy on behalf of Creosote and showed some acknowledgement of a need for fresh sounds and concepts. However, it was criticised for the immaturity of the lyrics and adoption of a 'gangster' beat. The intensity of the inital backlash also gave way to some slightly softer reviews, with some critics claiming the album was 'alright' and 'had its moments'. Alan Reed of The Guardian wrote 'if you can ignore the walking disaster that is Creosote's career, tracks such as 'Eggs on Top' and 'Pies and Lies' do stand as reasonably enjoyable rock songs'. Commercial While initially selling well, briefly ahead of "Ruinous Ways" in figures, sales faltered as the album's quality became apparent, as well as the popularity of "Ruinous Ways" as the "summer album of 2003", often blasting out of cars on hot afternoons. The album's singles singles performed poorly in the charts, the strongest chorus was on 'Eggs on Top', but it's radio play was hampered by its length, seeing it drop out of the top 10 swiftly. 'Buggers' peaked at number 4 on the UK singles chart, though largely as a spectacle and novelty single rather than a serious track. 'Mary Belle Rouge', floundered around number 30 before plunging after its first week, this being largely blamed on its simply being a re-release of a previous single. Meanwhile the album enjoyed a brief spell at number 1 on its first day, before slipping to number 2 to Ruinous Ways, then bombing downwards as sales faltered. Tracklisting Tour & Aftermath Mr Creosote became enraged at the commercial performance, declaring it to be due to unspecified meddling, and held to that more of the British public had bought the album and singles than was being shown "on the computer". This false impression was bolstered by his previous securing of the 2003 Glastonbury main stage to open his tour, something agreed in late 2002 when festival organisers predicted his name alone would still bring more crowds than The Railway Kings, who played the second stage at the same time. This led to the infamous 'pyramid stage exodus', as thousands filed out of the poor Creosote performance in favour of The Railway Kings, largely worsened by Mr Creosote's jeers and jokes bringing attention to his rivals on the second stage. The rest of the "Millennial Creosote" tour was plagued by low attendance numbers and poor press coverage from music journalists who attended the concerts. Jeremiah started most shows immensely drunk and repeatedly fumbled lyrics, either requiring the use of lyric sheets to remember or simply giving up and letting the band play. Shows alternated between him adopting the iconic singer/bass stance or bringing on a bassist and marching himself to exhaustion around the stage with a microphone, giving his delivery an even more winded sound, cutting off most lines halfway through for breath. The tour helped strengthen the impression of Mr Creosote as a "car crash celebrity", and "victim to the vices of rock 'n roll", now burned out and a has-been, with his talents called into question. Towards the end of the year he lost his longtime record label EMI, due to Eggs on Top's poor performance and the companies own financial troubles, as well as Creosote's increasing unpopularity as a public figure. His vanity label ran as an EMI subsidiary "Big Boi Records" - which was virtually defunct as early as 1999 - would become Creosote's new full-time independent label, creating another enormous an unsustainable drain on his finances and business. Of course the EMI incident was blamed entirely on his former bandmates and their sinister influences over the music industry and media. The complete failure of the album resulted in Creosote's more cautious and measured approach on Yesterday's Leftovers (2005), and Forgiveness (2007), which would prompt his revival towards the end of the decade.